But why would Facebook want such a deal? Blackberry’s slide from
grace has been going on for years, but September was a particularly bad
month. The companyannounced it would lay off about 40 percent of its
workforce, that it had lost $1 billion in the last quarter, and that it
was backing off the consumer market to focus on businesses. Echoing
this, T-Mobile stores have since stopped carrying BlackBerry
smartphones.
The market is pretty duopolistic, at least for now, and there’s not
much reason for that to change in the short run. Windows Phone is
fighting for third place in Europe—according to Engadget, it’s
celebrating 10.8 percent market share in France and 12 percent in
Britain. BlackBerry’s presence in Europe, meanwhile, shrank to a
diminutive 2.4 percent in the five major European markets. BlackBerry’s
market share in America fell to 4.3 percent in July.
Even were BlackBerry a good buy, it wouldn’t be a good fit for
Facebook. Just over a year ago, Mark Zuckerberg said a Facebook
phone “has always been the wrong strategy for us.” Even if Zuckerberg
has changed his mind about a Facebook phone, BlackBerry seems like the
antithesis of what it would be looking for, especially with the
company’s recent pivot back into its business-focused niche. Have you
ever wanted to provide all of your employees with a phone centered on
social networking?
Facebook would need to roll back a number of very recent BlackBerry
decisions the moment it stepped through the door. Facebook also has
significant work left to do with the existing markets: One recent study
found that Facebook’s mobile ads have a vastly higher ROI on iOS than on
Android.
All of this aside, BlackBerry is still a valuable company. The Wall Street Journal notes a
number of assets owned by BlackBerry, including $2.6 billion in cash,
no debt, and patents worth between $1 billion and $3 billion. And I’m
also guessing Facebook will take note of another bit of BlackBerry news
breaking today: BlackBerry’s messaging app picked up 20 million
users across Android and iOS since its launch a week ago.
Still, BlackBerry as we’ve come to know it would be a quagmire for Facebook.
Sean Vitka holds a J.D. from Boston College Law School. He was a
legal fellow at the Open Technology Institute and a Google Policy
Fellow at Georgetown Law.
SOURCE: Nigerianmonitor.com
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